EVERY FIXED STAR

This historical novel continues the adventures of Marie Dorion, the Indian widow of a French trapper in the Pacific Northwest of 1814. Our heroine frets about her unruly sons, her new husband, her chancy lifestyle, her skill as a mother, and most of all her worthiness as a human being. How can God really love a person like her? This is religious propaganda that not even the considerable skill of Barbara Rosenblat can salvage. One marvels at her ability to animate the impossibly gentle and articulate characters, to add vigor to writing that possesses none, to make every listless sentence sound, if not inspired, fresh. But even she cannot overcome the absence of tension and stretches of preachiness. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 03/JAN 04]